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babuskov about 5 hours ago

OpenAI crawler burning money for nothing

I have a bunch of blog posts, with URLs like these:

  https://mywebsite/1-post-title
  https://mywebsite/2-post-title-second
  https://mywebsite/3-post-title-third
  https://mywebsite/4-etc
For some reason, it tries every combination of numbers, so the requests look like this:

  https://mywebsite/1-post-title/2-post-title-second
  https://mywebsite/1-post-title/3-post-title-third
etc.

Since the blog engine simply discards everything after number (1,2,3...) and just serves the content for blog post #1, #2, #3,... the web server returns a valid page. However, all those pages are the same.

The main problem here is that there is no website page that has such compound links like https://mywebsite/1-post-title/2-post-title-second

So it's clearly some bug in the crawler.

Maybe OpenAI is using AI code for their crawler because it has so dumb bugs you cannot believe any human would write it.

They will make 90000 requests to load my small blog with 300 posts.

Cannot imagine what happens with larger websites that have thousands of blog posts.

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surrTurr about 9 hours ago

Ask HN: Self hosted Waitlist with Landing page?

Currently building a little app.

To see if people would be interested in it, I want to build a little landing page that features some screenshots and has a waiting list (via email) at the bottom.

Are there any services or open source projects for this? Preferably using shadcn/react/supabase. I don't want to reinvent the wheel here.

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justneedaname 6 days ago

Ask HN: How do you prevent the impact of social media on your children?

I don't yet have children but having grown up during the rise of social media, it's clear to me that the way it is used now by young children and teens has transformed even from when I was their age (approx 10 years ago). It worries me for when I myself have to manage their exposure to things like this. On one hand, I feel it would be in their best interests to be completely shielded from it as I personally feel it isn't beneficial for them on the whole at that age. However, it's undeniable that at that age it's all about fitting in and it would likely make them feel like a bit of an outcast if I were to limit them from being a part of it, like I imagine every other kid would be.

I'm curious to know what kinds of methods you have implemented to manage this or whether you feel the same as me

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ghoomketu 5 days ago

Ask HN: Seeking device to normalize audio output for consistent volume levels

Hello hn. I'm looking for a device that I can insert between the audio output and speaker to normalize the audio.

The goal is to ensure that sudden loud noises don't become overwhelming and quieter parts sound reasonably the same.

My reason for doing this is because it's so hard to watch movies these days because of the inconsistent volume levels (2x harder at night).

Any suggestions or recommendations on specific products or solutions would be greatly appreciated! Any DIY suggestions are also welcome too.

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snide 1 day ago

Ask HN: Has anyone tried alternative company models (like a co-op) for SaaS?

Long story short, I'm building a new product and will likely launch it as a yearly SaaS with a permissive license. I'm later in my career and am mostly building it for fun, but I think it has potential to be a good, small business that I'd have fun fiddling with for a long time.

I went through and set up the usual LLC, but was curious about how I could set it up to be a member or worker-owned company. Has anyone done anything like that from the beginning? Should I just worry about this later?

With licensing, the typical model has been to make your core permissive, and keep the hosting / billing application private. Has anyone made even that part of their SaaS open? I know that would make is really easy to fork the business, but was thinking something like a time-gated Functional Source License (FSL) might work?

I'm open to ideas. I don't see this discussed commonly on HN, so figured it was a good topic.

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throw101010101 3 days ago

Ask HN: How can I realistically change careers?

I’ve spent almost two decades in digital-focused roles, specialising in strategy, user research, and creating frameworks for better customer experiences (ostensibly UX I suppose).

While I’ve found the work rewarding, I feel it’s time for a significant career change—potentially outside of this domain entirely.

I’m seeking advice from others who have made mid-career transitions:

• How did you pinpoint new directions that matched your skills and interests?

• What were the most effective ways to reposition your experience in a new field?

• Are there any resources or strategies you’d recommend for upskilling or building networks?

I've often thought about cybersecurity as something I'd like to specialise in, but it seems like bootcamps and the like aren't worth the money they charge (most advice has been starting at the bottom as an IT helpdesk worker and going from there, but I'm no spring chicken anymore. But I'm not against starting at the very bottom and working my way up).

I realise this is quite a broad ask, and apologies for the throwaway. I’d appreciate any insights, especially from those who’ve shifted from established careers to something entirely different. Thanks in advance!

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truetraveller 1 day ago

Ask HN: Best dedicated server in the US

Need a dedicated. What's the most reliable + reasonably-priced? Came across Datapacket.com, which seems pretty good. All insights welcome. I'm sure many will benefit with this info!

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cbracketdash about 18 hours ago

Ask HN: Underrated emerging fields in science/engineering?

Hi everyone!

I've come to the realization lately that I have a poor understanding of budding research/engineering fields.

In your opinion, what are some underrated research/engineering fields that you believe have significant positive potential?

For example, what are the "AlexNet"s in the fields of chemistry, biology, physics, computer science, mechanical engineering, etc?

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stemcanuck about 4 hours ago

Ask HN: What are your "great" programmer habits?

"I'm not a great programmer; I'm just a good programmer with great habits." - Kent Beck

1. What are your great habits?

2. How did you inculcate them?

3. How do you follow them on a daily basis when things get hectic/busy?

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nothrowaways about 5 hours ago

Ask HN: Why is too much power accumulated in the president?

The US a day ago is going to be totally different from the US a day from now.

It looks like two totally different countries.

Why was this design considered good?

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bwestergard 6 days ago

Ask HN: Dense Tree Layout Algorithms

I recently bought a poster which features a really beautiful rendering of a phylogenetic tree of the world's bird families (a rooted binary tree).

https://lynxnaturebooks.com/product/orders-and-families-of-the-birds-of-the-world-poster/

I am sure it was carefully designed by hand. What algorithms could automatically generate a layout like this? The graphviz layout algorithms are poorly suited to the problem because they cannot seem to avoid edge/node coincidence beyond a certain node density.

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tamersalama 1 day ago

Ask HN: Is there money in RAG?

I see that the market strength of RAG-based solutions is in internal (proprietary) repositories of data.

I built a small one for publicly accessible documents but the models (or models with internet access) are gaining ground.

I wanted to hear more thoughts.

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ruwak 1 day ago

Patent Worth It?

I have a friend who was in YC and he said software patents are a waste of time. He said in his entire career he's never met or known someone to enforce a software patent. Thoughts?

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namanyayg 6 days ago

Ask HN: Is maintaining a personal blog still worth it?

Remember when maintaining a blog was THE way to build your developer brand?

When thoughtful technical writing could lead to speaking gigs, job offers, and meaningful connections?

But in 2025, the landscape has shifted dramatically:

- LinkedIn's algorithmic feed heavily favors short-form "broetry" over substantive technical content - Twitter/X has become a battleground of AI-generated hot takes - Medium is drowning in SEO-optimized tutorials that all say the same thing

Unless you're already established or willing to play the AI-SEO game, it feels impossible to build genuine readership for a technical blog in 2025.

Yet part of me wonders if I'm just being cynical. Maybe there's still value in writing for its own sake? Or perhaps there are distribution channels I haven't considered?

For those still maintaining personal blogs: How do you find readers? Where do you share your content? And most importantly - why do you keep writing?

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hcwilk 10 days ago

Ask HN: Work on robotics or agents?

I'm a recent Mechanical Engineering / CS graduate working in the Sales Engineering space for a cybersecurity company.

I have an opportunity to join an early-stage robotics company in SF and work with some amazing robotics engineers. However, I've also been building security-related agents/workflows in my free time that have gotten the attention of some senior people at my org.

This isn't necessarily a "which one should I pick?" but rather where you all see both of these industries going in the next decade or so. No one can predict the future, but would love to hear thoughts from people way more experienced than me in either field.

Thanks!

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ulam2 1 day ago

Ask HN: Which RSS reader do you use?

Its been some time since this question was asked. Every RSS reader I've used so far sucks. Either the built-in web support is poor or it stops fetching the feeds or renders then poorly. Sorry for my frustration, but I would like to know what everyone else is using and if they are satisfied with their RSS reader.

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cedws 1 day ago

Ask HN: Cheapest way to run a time-series database in cloud?

I need to run a database (preferably Postgres-based, currently using TimescaleDB) to store about 20M rows of price data per day, with the option to discard or offload data after 7d to cold storage.

It's just a hobby project that doesn't make me any money, so I want to run this as cheaply as possible. I was experimenting with TimescaleDB cloud but the pricing there starts at $40 a month not including storage.

I tried running it myself on Fly.io but the DB imploded within hours of setting it up and was extremely difficult to recover, so I had to give up on that.

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chaifeng 3 days ago

Ask HN: Does frequently upgrading dependencies add real value to a product?

Dependency upgrades are a routine part of maintaining software projects.

I’m curious to hear how different teams and individuals approach this. How do you handle frequent upgrades? Do you see it as essential, or do you take a different approach?

What has your experience been?

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Openai2 10 days ago

Ask HN: How do you backup your Android?

How do you backup your Android?

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d--b 10 days ago

Ask HN: A friend has brain cancer: any bio hacks that worked?

A friend recently got diagnosed with stage 4 GBM. It's the 4th person I know who has it, and it's getting old, so I want to help, bio-hacking style.

I stumbled upon these guys who built a helmet that rotates strong magnets to create oscillating magnetic fields in the brain. They claim the oscillating magnetic fields cause cancer cell death through mechanisms I don't understand at all.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-46758-w

Did anyone try to build one of these?

-- Other avenues:

1. taking vortioxetine

https://ethz.ch/en/news-and-events/eth-news/news/2024/09/ant...

2. getting infected with the zika virus (probably the best thing to do IMO)

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37324152/

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33002018/

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tetris11 2 days ago

Ask HN: Request to add an [AI] tag to posts?

This is such a great website, but it's becoming less interesting by the minute.

Can we have a title detection system, similar to the existing automatic "[YEAR]" and "How to" → "" rules, which just marks a post as AI related?

I know this might be a far harder task than I think, since AI is now the defacto topic.

Or, can anyone suggest a Firefox addon that filters out post based on a blocklist of words?

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avivallssa 1 day ago

Ask HN: Is anyone still deploying Oracle Forms or Apex for new applications?

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LifeIsBio 9 days ago

Ask HN: How to approach first days on a new job as a senior PM?

Inspired by this post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42656184

I'm starting a new job in a few days as a senior PM at a ~1000 person company, but I've never been a PM before. My career path has been: PhD -> Engineer -> Founder.

My time as a founder has given me some unique perspective on products in my space, but I'm less experienced with the day-to-day of a PM in a medium sized company. My exposure has been second hand watching the PMs while I was an engineer. Any advice on how to help ensure things kick off well?

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Imustaskforhelp 2 days ago

Ask HN: How to Implement Ideas and when to leave them?

I truly believe that I have some programming ideas (like hey lets do X thing but the twist of Y) (like decentralized link shorteners) which are really weird but could have some impact on the world.

To me , it feels like I get overwhelmed , Like I wanted to automate signal-chat app (https://github.com/bbernhard/signal-cli-rest-api/issues/643)

I get to something which can be considered very decent for my age and I learn something new for my age (16 here) (though I used claude for this)

but I just can't justify it taking my head for like a week straight and eating my marks.

I can't actually seem to have balance. I have had enough. I wanted to create this really cool project that everybody likes and gets stars on github , I wanted to be the cool guy in coding (I know sounds cringe) , I look up to people like primagen , fireship , maybe even theo . But now I just feel like programming has become my tool of saying hey I know things , instead of actually having impact in the world.

I feel like chasing the clout of internet people which just feels weird. I was once in a discord chat (not even related to foss) and there was this one guy who belittled me for not having enough stars (like I think I have 0 stars from anybody else or very less) and he had like 20 something. It just feels wrong. Open source doesn't seem like the thing I had hoped it was. Some people star something if the project is great (maybe like signal) but doesn't have a perfect api (I think)*

It just feels like I am ranting. I used to get really good marks in studies untill I am daydreaming about how to proceed in this action. It has truly taken a toll at me. I feel like living a double life.

I feel so distracted , fuzzed out. I just feel like Leaving coding for 2 years (I am in high school right now) and to join it after 2 years when I am officially in college and this would be the thing which would matter then.

(I like maths , physics but chemistry has just taken another level of toll at me , I just can't do organic chemistry because instead of organic chemistry , I am messing up with electron debugging and trying to find how to use signal to create decentralized shorteners / storage using group avatars or some other idea like a alternative to bittorrent which can work over normal vpn ) I don't even think that I can earn money with any of these things. Most of these are p2p-ish , the most I can earn is someone's good will but I won't forsake my mental health just for that , I suppose.

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eeemmmooo 2 days ago

Ask HN: Best technologies to track location of people in a large building?

If I had a say 50,000 sq ft. Building that had up to 1000 people on it at one time. What is the best way to track where each of them are down to a couple inches accuracy. I’d also love to be able to get the direction they are facing as well. This tracking would of course be opted in and I assume would require some hardware that the person wears.

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namrog84 3 days ago

Ask HN: Banned from Discord (9-year user) over an abandoned server – Advice?

Hi HN,

I've been a Discord user (namrog84) since Jan 2016 and it's crucial for my personal friendships and professional game dev work. Three months ago, I was permanently banned (Oct 2026?) without any warnings. Apparently because an old server I created for the game Dark and Darker was left abandoned and unmoderated.

Now, not only have I lost contact with friends and collaborators, but I'm also cut off from essential support channels for development tools and communities. Despite multiple appeal attempts (all seemingly automated rejections), I don't think I've had a real conversation with Trust & Safety. I acknowledge as a server creator I share responsibility for moderation, but without any prior warnings a permanent ban seems disproportionate.

Discord was my primary social outlet after I left my role at Microsoft, so losing that network has been personally tough and professionally limiting.

Is there any proven path forward or guidance from the HN Community? Are there lessons from others who've faced similar bans and found success either in reinstating their accounts or otherwise? any advice or insights would be greatly appreciated.

Full additional details (timelines, appeals, screenshots, and such here): https://gist.github.com/namrog84/684f5e8ea854d7d04c149854b84bdce7

For context, I'm a former Microsoft employee turned full-time indie game dev: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-gorman-b3544412/

Thanks for reading and any tips or advice is welcome.

Adam (namrog84)

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johanam 3 days ago

Ask HN: DevOps Assistance for LA Fires Relief Initiative

Hi my name is Johan and I built and maintain https://fireaid.info - a map and resource hub to connect those affected by the fires with aid as well as resources for people to give and volunteer. I started building the site on Jan 8, and launched it in 48 hours.

I'm in the process of setting up an API to make these resources more widely accessible. However I need some assistance from someone familiar with Google Cloud, Postgres and Fast API.

johan@fireaid.info

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damiaozi 3 days ago

Coincidence between the start spacecraft scene in Prometheus and 60s phreaking

Is there any coincidence between the scene in "Alien Prometheus" where the engineer pilot ignites the spacecraft by a piccolo and 1960s phreaking(2600 Hz whistles)?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NegOHzcBlHQ (1:09)

btw, In the real world, in addition to the early Ma Bell telephone system(in-band signaling), are there any complex systems that are controlled by tones (not human voice)?

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rookie123 6 days ago

Ask HN: How do you sleep on time?

Hello fellow HN guys, My work mostly ends around 9 to 10:00 PM. I have this hangover of spending a few hours after dinner so it ends up me being able to sleep around 12:00PM-1:00 AM which is very late. What can I do to get to sleep early?

Thanks!

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mhsabu 3 days ago

Neuwark: Autonomous AI customer support agent with human in the loop

In 2025, We still need Human in the Loop to make LLMs more powerful and effective.

After 10 months of hard work, numerous ideas, and technology iterations, we are happy to launch Neuwark

Engaging customers across platforms while maintaining quality can be overwhelming. Neuwark simplifies this with real-time AI chatbots, human-in-the-loop capabilities, and training with enterprise data.

Why Neuwark?

Real-Time Human-in-the-Loop Chat: Ensure quality at all times.

Customizable AI Agents: Optimize with advanced settings and prompt adjustments.

Team-Friendly: Collaborate easily on training and management.

Responses with References: Transparent and credible answers.

Built-in Observability: Monitor agent working processes.

Multi-Channel Engagement: Connect across Web, WhatsApp, Telegram, Facebook, and Instagram.

We’ve built Neuwark to empower businesses to elevate customer engagement without compromising on quality. Whether automating support, scaling communication, or enhancing collaboration, Neuwark’s Human-in-the-Loop AI is here to help.

This wouldn't have been possible without the incredible support from the LlamaIndex and Chroma teams, who truly acted as extended teammates. A special thanks also to Microsoft for Startups for their generous support through Azure credits.

I’d love to hear your feedback or answer any questions about Neuwark—ask me anything!

Discover more on our Website: https://neuwark.com/

Stay connected: https://www.linkedin.com/company/neuwark/

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